William A. Smith, DD. President of Randolph-Macon College , and Professor of Moral and Intellectual Philosophy., Lectures on the Philosophy and Practice of Slavery as exhibited in the Institution of Domestic Slavery in the United States: withe Duties of Masters to Slaves.

[320] And the aged father! Shall no child or grandchild support his tottering limbs to his couch, and lay him down to die in peace? Shall all these delicate services, if performed at all, be left to stranger hands? Shall those who never knew mother, who never cared for grandfather, or who were never reckoned among their friends, be left to perform these last services? There may be masters whose business or whose want of thought may lead them to be inattentive to the social sorrows of the sick and the aged; but they should remember that “they also have a Master in heaven.” Would they have Him to be as inattentive to their sorrows in sickness and in age? Let them beware “lest the same measure they mete be measured to them again!”

III. the duties of masters to slaves as religious beings.

There are no duties which we owe our slaves as “our money,” or as social beings, which do not derive additional weight and importance from the fact that they are religious beings, and that, as such, we owe them all these duties, and still higher and more solemn duties. “But I am not a Christian, and therefore am not concerned in the discussion of this topic.” But I am not aware that to omit to profess to be an honest man, or to neglect to strive to be an honest man, absolves